domain:ashallowalcove.substack.com
One obvious point seems to be that a a Geran-2 weights 200kg, 60kg of which is the warhead. When it's launched in a wave of several hundred, at night and accompanied by decoys, it currently does OK at reaching its target.
Adding hundreds of balloons to this operation (I don't think you'd want more than 2 drones per balloon, that's a large payload already for a lighter-than-air vehicle) is unlikely to decrease the cost per hit. Especially when compared to just doubling Geran-2 production again.
erwgv3g34
24m ago
I still remember when the admin of my videogame forum was killed, and the Daily Mail was the first to get the basic facts of the case right (board member obsessed with the admin's girlfriend decided to murder the hypothenuse) while "respectable" outlets like the BBC were talking about wargame fanatics and dark secrets. I got reverse Gell-Mann amnesia from that, and now trust the Daily Mail more than any other British newspapers.
madeofmeat
26m ago
I wonder if the logic is something like the first sequel being an easy cash grab where you don't want to expend too much effort or creativity, since it's fundamentally a bit grubby endeavor riding on the coattails of the initial movie, and the sequel is probably going to sink into obscurity after pulling in the expected amount of extra profit. However, if the sequel does better than expected, you've got a potential successful movie series going, and you should again start putting more effort and attention into the next sequel since now you want the sequel movies to be seen as An Entire Thing again.
Lorian_Aristedes
36m ago
Here in Australia we’ve seen the latest example of ideological purity movements devouring themselves. What I find interesting about this particular case is that, to me, it accurately represents what seems to have happened in a lot of left wing movements over the last 20+ years.
Co-founder and former Queensland state leader of The Greens party, Drew Hutton, has failed in his appeal to his own party to reverse the revocation of his life membership. Hutton helped found the Greens with Bob Brown, both in Queensland (1990) and federally (1991), the initial ideological basis was for creating a party with “a historic mission to try to push the world to a more sustainable footing”. The parties platform that I recall, growing up as an Australian in the 90’s, was for combatting climate change, stopping deforestation, protecting fisheries, reefs and banning live export of cattle and other stock.
But both Bob Brown and Drew Hutton have long since departed from the front lines of the parties political battles. In their place we have seen a succession of leaders that promote environmentalism, but increasingly campaign on social justice issues. A party that (until the recent federal election) were making the majority of their electoral ground in inner city electorates (inner Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane).
Hutton was embroiled in drama from a twitter post (what else could cause so much drama) made over a year ago, which led to him being labelled a trans-phobe and promptly to the revocation of his life membership after he refused demands to delete the post and the comments below it. Today it was announced that the year long appeal process has not landed in his favour, but is in fact keeping with the original revocation. But if he’s espousing hatred and division online while somewhat representing his political party that he cofounded, then surely that’s a just result?
My initial thoughts were along the lines of “grandpa didn’t keep up to date with the terminology and unknowingly crossed the line”, however, after a bit of research it becomes clear that Hutton didn’t even make the hurtful comments, rather that he “provided a platform for others to do so”. Which after further research, revealed that he had publicly questioned his Party in their actions of removing membership from a different member for voicing concerns over a proposed amendment from the NSW Greens to change “pregnant people” from “pregnant women” in an upcoming act.
Interesting. I’ve run out of steam now, it’s a been a long day on site, but I wanted to post this and hear what other thoughts The Motte have - Australian and International.
Links:
If that's how someone sees "worse", then touché, I suppose.
Lizzardspawn
58m ago
They are worse. They fact check and are not hell bent on any ideology other than traffic.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1hr ago
so the liver only has to do about half of the work, comparatively speaking.
HFCS is usually also about half glucose (by dry weight).
The most common forms of HFCS used for food and beverage manufacturing contain fructose in either 42% ("HFCS 42") or 55% ("HFCS 55") by dry weight, as described in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR 184.1866).[5]
I feel a little bad about the swamp of requests you're gonna get. Though you really should have forecasted this, ha.
You're half correct. Malaysian Chinese, (semi-)short black hair which stands on end as if I've been electrocuted; buzzed on the sides, longer on the top. Dude, 24, wears glasses (is hopelessly shortsighted), perpetual smirk, wears almost exclusively white shirts. Imagining a more well put-together version of L from Death Note probably gets you 95% of the way there.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2hr ago
Well I'm not Kreskin, I just tend to picture people in my head.
As for the no I'm not famous part, that's what you would say if you're keeping it from the rest of us.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2hr ago
Well… you’re right about white, American, and not bald! Sadly you struck out on the rest. Although I’m intrigued by that last part. Hopefully at some point in my life I’ll make you right about that!
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2hr ago
Forties, white, I imagine you in an Oxford button down, white or blue. I keep seeing everyone in short sleeves but maybe just because it's hot AF. Not bald, hair probably dark. American. Famous in some way that you keep from the rest of us.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2hr ago
Obama wasn't a community organizer when he ran for Senate, he had been a state senator and a constitutional law lecturer for years.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
C'mon George, 90% of Indian men end up with a pot-belly eventually, no points for that guess haha. Of course, Ozempic must have its say.
conservatively cut
Hair sounds right, but I have faded sides and back. No overbite, I have excellent teeth! At least 2 people have asked me, unsolicited, if I had them done in Turkey, though they were very drunk.
I, apparently, have surgeon's hands. A surgeon said so! Ignore the fact that said surgeon is my dad. But women do like 'em.
Hmm.. On the colors. I think you're on to something there.
Still not a fan of those spikes off the field.
Genius is never appreciated in its time. Alas.
You could be a sympathetic minor character in a Spielberg movie set in New Delhi, but you get revealed as evil in the end.
I do not know what this implies, but I suppose getting eaten by a dinosaur isn't the weirdest thing that could happen in Delhi.
roystgnr
2hr ago
For "worth the time" I'd nominate Monsters University, Finding Dory, the Toy Story sequels, and Ralph Breaks the Internet. My kids would add Frozen II.
The only Disney sequel (arguably) as good as or better than the original is Toy Story 3.
My kids would swear that Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (TV series sequel) was at least as good as the movie. I watched enough with them to say that's surprisingly plausible but not enough to agree or disagree.
Even with adult movies it's rare that a sequel surpasses the original, probably for the reasons you state. Aliens, Terminator 2, Last Crusade, Dark Knight, and for especially the first three it was still downhill afterward.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2hr ago
I can’t resist the temptation. Do me do me do me!
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2hr ago
Yeah, weekends or evenings.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2hr ago
I've seen this excuse used approximately a thousand times, and look: what if your priors just are wrong here? What if the Democratic party and its surrounding establishment just aren't the all-powerful, almighty band of operators that this theory presumes that they are? What if genuinely is information that they haven't obtained, at least in usable form, until it comes out?
The theory presumes nothing of the sort. But they had control of the executive branch. If Trump has info that he could be hiding for personal reasons, there is no reason to think Biden's people wouldn't have had it too. If anything, the Dems ought to have a much stronger prior for having access because so much of the IC and deep state was supporting them. What possible chain of events could have taken place to make some killshot link between Trump and Epstein available to the Trump admin now, but not to the Biden admin any time in the last four years?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Daily Mail is not the best sort of news outlet
Off topic, but the hate the Daily Mail gets is surreal to me. They're literally no worse than any "respectable" media outlet.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2hr ago
One thing that needs to be kept in mind on this topic is selection effects. If you're an upper class professional in rich Northern Virginia, the average immigrant you encounter is likely very heavily selected for intelligence, education, and familiarity with American culture.
Lucky.
Since we're dropping anecdotes, I'll share mine as someone who has much more experience with the lower class side of things - quite possibly more than everyone else on the site combined.
My first meaningful experience was working as a laborer in high school for contractor family members. There was a period of time when we were willing to work for Indian small business owners and a reason that is no longer the case. The pattern would go like this: we would get a call about a problem, go to check it out. Give a rough quote, get an agreement, then do the work. Think minor to moderate repair jobs taking 1-3 man-days of work.
At that point we would present an invoice, and the Indian man who owned the place would interpret that as "time to start haggling", with the added bonus that the work was already done, so he had huge leverage to be a totally obstinant asshole. There was just nothing about their approach that my culture would recognize as fair dealing or good faith. On several occasions, family members did go back and destroy the repair work instead of taking an insulting low-ball offer out of sheer, outraged spite.
We soon stopped taking their calls. But when I see certain elements speak negatively of the subcontinent as a culture that celebrates being dishonest scammers and grifters, well...
I also worked alongside a fair number of illegal Hispanics during this time. I don't have particular personal complaints about them, but neither are they precious compared to the median American laborer. There are definitely standouts (Gregorio was double my age and put my ass to shame), but it's more that the far left of their bell curve in drive just never leaves the old country. Their market niche is a willingness to ignore labor laws, OSHA, and building codes. If you want to take a libertarian stance on that, maybe attack the other angle there, instead of importing a class of deliberate lawbreakers.
And in my current job, I deal with tons and tons of immigrants. Dozens every day, from all continents save Antartica. It's hard to give examples without doxing myself, but speaking in very broad generalities...
Imagine being forced to keep an even demeanor while you spend twenty minutes trying (and failing) to explain to a grown woman, using multiple forms of translation software because she does not speak any English, that a circle is different from a square, while she just looks at you sadly and says "no comprendo...". And you never actually get the idea through, you just finally manage to beg her to call a middle-schooler to put on speaker phone, and something the child says in Spanish makes her stop bothering you on that topic.
Then she asks you to help her commit welfare fraud.
That's a bit worse than the median, but it's far from an unrepresentative example. There are better ones, of course, but for every African immigrant who is just respectably middle-class with an accent, there is one who is a paranoid schizophrenic that's invisible to NoVa office workers. Many varieties of Asians seem to be more prone to demanding and Karen-ish behavior than white women - again, while being nearly incomprehensible about it. If the average immigrant you deal with just has a bit of an accent and can quote from The Office, consider that you are experiencing a large selection effect and there are tens of millions of others who cause much more severe cultural friction. Imagine if YOU, Highly Educated Theater Kid, had to deal with cast members from Duck Dynasty every day.
And I have to mention the medical side of things. Having a doctor you struggle to understand is actually extremely stressful. I had to take a kid to a specialist who ended up being Nigerian. The thing is, I genuinely liked the guy. He was charismatic and made a sincere effort to give me thorough explanations. I appreciated the effort. It was mostly wasted though, because I was struggling to make out two words in three.
On another occasion I was assigned to a GP who was an Indian woman. I went in for one physical and it was one of the most demeaning experiences of my life. Refused to make contact, would barely look at me. She ignored my concerns and fixated on a single skin thing that she immediately referred to an associated specialist for a 10 minute outpatient procedure that billed my insurance as a "surgery". I'm sure she is very good at gaming the system to make number go up, but I'm never booking another appointment with someone who considers me an untouchable, and if I could press a button to have her denaturalized and deported I'd hit it twice.
But on the other hand, I don't have terrible stories of violence and drunk driving. I've dealt with plenty of second generation Hispanics and Asians who seem to have assimilated fine (and others who were disasters, but disasters within the expected bounds for mid-00s emo girls).
What I really want is for the cultural friction to go down. I want fewer people I struggle to communicate with. I want fewer people with alien, unpleasant mores. There's this thing I've been seeing a lot of lately from completely unassimilated South/Central American young women. When you ask them a question in English, they don't say "Que?", they do this thing where they jerk their head forwards and jaw upwards at you while making a sound that I can only describe as an "angrily inquisitive grunt". And I'm sure it's just a cultural quirk, but I can't stop my lizard brain from going. I want fewer people with alien ethnic ingroup preferences. Nara said something down thread about opposing identitarianism from the left AND the right, but the identitarianism from the right was "American". Of course things get unpleasant when that's no longer enough to answer the question.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2hr ago
I did this to myself, didn't I. Yeah you're Indian, a dude, anyone who saw you would think yeah, probably one day will have love handles but otherwise normal shape.Black hair, slightly wavy, conservatively cut. Thin fingers. Mild overbite. You could be a sympathetic minor character in a Spielberg movie set in New Delhi, but you get revealed as evil in the end. Prone to light colors, and blues. Still not a fan of those spikes off the field.
CanofWorms
3hr ago
Still working through Grant. Finished listening to the audiobook Nickel Boys and gave up on Trust. Relistening to Stephen King's The Wind Through The Keyhole which is essentially The Dark Tower 4.5. I also just picked up a bunch of Pulitzer Prize books from eBay (Oscar Wao, Interpreter of Maladies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Poisonwood Bible (not a Pulitzer winner)).
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3hr ago
Why not.
To at least one woman you are. Your username suggests not a spring chicken so I imagine 30 or 40 something white guy. Mildly overweight. Gamer. Beard, longish hair. A good voice. I'm just making this up, I could be completely wrong.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3hr ago
I think I've described myself quite a few times, but I'll bite.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3hr ago
I'm usually shy of card games or deck builders, but I've heard good things about it. I'll give it a shot!
You're wired differently. I have no idea what anyone here looks like, and any self-descriptions I read I forget. Mottizens are all names and sets of random factoids to me. Here's your character sheet:
It's not exhaustive, but blame my bad memory. I barely remember anything about anyone. Which isn't meant to express any kind of low esteem that I hold mottizens in; I like you guys and am glad to have this place. It's just difficult to see you as fully-features human beings when all I get is text, and no way to square what you read with any real-world impression of you. You might all be fabulists. You might all be figments of some AI's imagination. You probably aren't, I don't treat you as if you were, but it's just not the same as talking to people in the flesh.
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